no, Kompozer's lead never let me know about it. I just found a post in nvu forums hosted by geckozone he did but he never had the politeness to let me know about it. Since I am busy and rarely dive into fora - whatever the forum - I was not aware of Kompozer. But the guy is not far away, here in France, and we speak the same language. How hard, and well, sorry to say, how lame.

No, I don't think the guy contacted the copyright holder, Linspire Inc., either and that's quite unpolite too even if he has the full right granted by the license to do what he did.

no, I don't really appreciate when he calls Nvu bugs "glazbugs". I take that as an insult.

yes, his work is a good idea, but no, I don't think this is going to be a very useful mid- to long-term investment since the nvu 1.0 codebase is scheduled to die and be replaced by a xulrunner-based application anyway. It's gecko1.7-based and that's too old.

yes, I am working on that new app

Open-source and "free" licenses are not a known excuse for tactlessness.

Comments

Yes, I agree with you globally, but what about those ennoying bugs in NVU ? A minor bug-fix release would be very welcome, even if it's an old platform ! Firefox has just delivered 1.5.0.7 even if 2.0 is expected in a couple of months.
All this being said, it's easy to speak, and hard to do and you already have done a great job with NVU 1.0
But, you know, the ramson of success !!

#1: I'm working on Nvu extensions since the 0.7 version. I've proposed you a few patches but never got any reply (except a "rejected" in this blog). I've also proposed you my help to integrate Tidy in Nvu.

#2: I *did* try to contact Linspire to propose them some patches, but never got any answer either. Jerry Muelver (nvudev.org forum moderator) has more impact on them than me, but never got any answer either. However, he's been allowed to open a "KompoZer" board on the official forum.

#3: If you've read «glazbug» in the Geckozone forum, you've also read «kazbug». It's just a quick way to separate existing bugs from regressions introduced by KompoZer; the three most active contributors in Geckozone aren't developpers (Do-IT, Ymai, chinon37), the word 'regression' could be misinterpreted.

#4: Last year in Lyon (JDLL 2005), we talked about the difficulty to backport Nvu's code to Mozilla (Flore and Bobo were there). I proposed you to adapt Nvu's code to XUL Runner, you told me that «It's trivial and useless». This is the only reason why I don't work on a XUL Runner version: it would be a useless work since *you* decided to work on it.

#5: Glad to hear it. If you read more about KompoZer, you'll find out that I clearly announce that KompoZer will be obsolete as soon as Composer2 comes true. This is even explained in the KompoZer board on the nvudev.org forum.

I've started this project because many bugs are much easier to correct by patching the source instead of developing extensions. Besides, most users can't even find/install such extensions (remember what you've written about GIMP?). As a moderator of an Nvu support forum, it takes me less time to work an a bug-fix release than answering the same stuff to users that get disapointed by Nvu.

Last but not least: with Jerry Muelver we found that it would be the best way to say that Nvu is still being developped. Many users write that they drop Nvu because of the known bugs that aren't patched.

KaZé: no, let's be precise here, in Lyon I said that making a xulrunner-based version of Nvu 1.0 would be non-trivial and useless. I said non-trivial because Nvu still relies on XPFE, and I said useless because if you move to Firefox toolkit, a complete revamping of the code makes sense.
It's not because I rejected some of your contributions that all contributions will always be rejected !!! What a strange reaction.

Daniel: I remember that very sharply because I stopped my holidays and went to the JDLL mainly to meet you and propose my help. Let's say I don't remember what you said ("just grab XUL Runner and link the libeditor, you're set: this is trivial but useless"), that's no question any more since you're working on the XUL Runner version.

However, this isn't the point: you didn't reject "some" of my contributions, you rejected *all* of them. You never replied *any* of my e-mails. Linspire (Tom Welch) replied to one of my e-mails (the one announcing my first extension), but never replied to my patch proposals either.

About my «strange reaction»: I'm glad I finally deserve your attention, but I won't wait for your blessing to publish my patches! Again, KompoZer isn't a fork since there hasn't been any release of Nvu since the 1.0 version (2006-06-20). For users, it's an unofficial bug-fix release; for Linspire and yourself, take it as a patch proposal.

I don't think I'm doing any harm to the Nvu community with this project. KompoZer follows the exact same tri-licence as Nvu, so that all my patches can be backported to Nvu any time. If you don't have the time, I can do it myself.

KaZé: Nvu has a goal. It's not a catch-all-patches project where all contributions are always accepted, becoming a gigantic mess. Like it or not.
I did not accept your site manager patch because we did not want Nvu to become a focal point for object management. I did not accept your URL rewriting thing because I had the feeling a chrome solution was not the good one. And so on.
So you're right about doing a fork. Anyway, the axe will eventually fall on the Nvu 1.0 codebase and probably on Kompozer with it.

Daniel: I don't get your point of messing Nvu's code, since you're revamping the whole code for the next version anyway. There is already a second trunk for Nvu/Composer2/whatever, so why not patching the old branch if it eases the use and the support?

Anyway, I'm glad I finally get answers about (some of) my patch proposals. Maybe you could give a look at KaZcadeS, too. There must be another good reason not to accept this one.

When editing the code in a large html file (eg ~1000000 or greater) ctrl-end never works in going to the end of the code, unlike every other text editor in existence. Like this file for example: kibosig.googlepages.com/f...

Anyway, thanks for the great program!
Now if only someone would code a perfect frontpage to xhtml covertor. Maybe I should learn programming and do it myself so I could clean up my (ugly) site:www.medi-vet.com/

Well, I thought that was what 'open source' was about. If you don't like the path that the main developement is taking, then make your own path. With all due respect, NVu, Composer, and mailnews html compose seems to be at a standstill. What's left than to 'do it yourself'. Some folks are competent to do that, and I applaude their efforts.
Regarding Gecko composer/Editor I think it is time to shit or get off the pot.
Confirmed bugs that are 3 or 4 years old speak for themselves. As far as mailnews html compose goes, if it can't be supported, (as demonstated by the lack of bug fixes) then just pull it out of the platform, and be done with it. Maybe someone will write an extension to restore basic N4.x functionality. I won't hold my breath.

With all respect: please look at what a user would expect from Nvu:
- Nvu 1.0 is a good application, but does not live up to some of its competition. It is a good start and now should move forward. That's what opensource is about.

- Currently we have Composer and Nvu, but it seems that both of these applications cannot seem to go forward with their development because the changes should be merged in some way.

- Where can a user currently learn about Nvu bugs and what's the status of them ? Through Mozilla's Bugzilla ? Through the Nvu forums ?

- Because there are no updates to Nvu, someone finally steps up and does something about this. That effort should be applauded, not critisized.

It would be nice if the author of KompoZer would have contacted you about this.
It would also be nice if you would follow the Nvu-forums to see what the Nvu-users are experiencing on a daily basis.
I expect that the author of KompoZer would have thought that announcing it on the Nvu forums would be enough. One would expect that the Nvu author also reads what's going on on its forums. It is quite stupid that I have read about it on the Nvu forums about a month ago and that only now you have learned about this.

Of course you are busy; we all are. Perhaps some moderator of the forums could give you a brief update when something on the forums should be brought to your attention.

This is very sad. What kazé did was precisely what makes open source shine. Take an unmaintained branch of a project and do what the license allows you: modify it, make it better, make it meet your needs.

Daniel, you did not know about KompoZer because you lost interest in the community that believed in Nvu. So you do not like "fora" and have to spend time earning your money. Nothing wrong there. But is not good to get angry because the community took charge of the abandoned code, in the absence of response from developer "main land".